Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a method of preparing a laminate and a method of separating a support.
Background Art
In recent years, thinner, smaller, or lighter electronic appliances, such as IC cards, mobile phones, and the like, have been required. In order to meet these requirements, thin semiconductor chips should be used as semiconductor chips to be embedded. Therefore, it is known that the thickness (film thickness) of a wafer substrate, which is a base of a semiconductor chip, is currently 125 μm to 150 μm, but should be 25 μm to 50 μm for next-generation chips. Accordingly, in order to obtain a wafer substrate having the above film thickness, a process of thinning the wafer substrate is necessarily required.
Since the strength of a wafer substrate is lowered by thinning, in order to prevent the damage of the thinned wafer substrate, during a preparing process, a structure such as a circuit is mounted on the wafer substrate while being automatically carried in a state where a support plate is bonded to the wafer substrate. Further, after the preparing process, the wafer substrate and the support plate are separated from each other. Therefore, hitherto, various methods of peeling a support from a wafer have been used.
Japanese Unexamined Patent Application, Publication No. H11-116046 (published Apr. 27, 1999) discloses a robot hand configured to have a gripping unit for gripping the outer periphery of a wafer in a wafer carrying robot connected to an arm member rotatably disposed on a machine frame and gripping and carrying the wafer.
Further, Japanese Unexamined Patent Application, Publication No. 2006-32506 (published Feb. 2, 2006) discloses a method of peeling a semiconductor wafer, in which the semiconductor wafer is bonded to a support having rigidity through an adhesive material, the method including an insertion process of inserting an insertion member into the adhesive material, and a vibration process of applying a vibration to the adhesive material while biasing the semiconductor wafer in a direction of peeling the semiconductor wafer from the support.